For Relatives Of Victims, Anger Adds To Anguish

By EDWARD A. GARGAN

Published: August 7, 1997

In homes and offices, in taxis and restaurants, South Korea stopped today, riveted by the news that more than 200 people -- many of them young couples on romantic getaways -- had been killed in the crash of a Korean Air jetliner in Guam this morning.

At a Korean Air center here this afternoon, Hong Jung Mi sat slumped in a brown vinyl armchair, sponging her reddening eyes with a square of terry cloth as she waited to hear the fate of her childhood friend Kim Soo Kyung, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher.

More than 15 hours had passed since the fiery crash of Korean Air Lines Flight 801 into a jungle hillside on Guam, and Ms. Hong still did not know if her friend was alive or dead. The missing woman's fiance, Kim Duk Hwan, 26, was horribly burned
but had survived, Ms. Hong said.

''I heard the news this morning and came right here,'' she whispered. ''We've been friends for the last 10 years. I knew her since I was a little kid. They were planning on getting married next year.''

Hundreds of other friends and relatives of the people on Flight 801 huddled in circles in the brown chairs scattered on the white marble floor of the Korean Air training center on Airline Boulevard. Many wept openly; others seemed immobile in their grief.

The toll of the dead seemed not to end. Young couples died. So did mothers and their children. A news editor for the Korea Broadcasting System, a state-owned television station, perished with his entire family. An opposition politician, Shin Ki Ha, and
his family also died.

Ten Americans, including residents of Marietta, Ga., and San Diego and Hacienda Heights, Calif., were among the victims. The family of Kaiyin Chun, a Korean-American from Marietta, was hit particularly hard. Mr. Chun left for Guam today to comfort his
10-year-old daughter, Grace, one of 29 survivors, and retrieve the bodies of his wife, Gloria, their daughter Lynda, and their son Timothy.

< The parents of Ben Hsu, 15, also departed for Guam from Hacienda Heights to retrieve the body of their son, a cousin of the Chun family.

Scenes of sorrow filled television screens across Korea as the four major networks suspended normal programming for blanket coverage of the crash, broadcasting reports from the scene in Guam, from the center where friends and relatives gathered, from
government offices.

At the Korean Air center here, Kim Yong Man, the general manager at an engineering plant for LG Industrial Systems, recalled the horror of events since he had taken his family to the airport.

''I woke up this morning to go to the bathroom and turned on CNN,'' he said, words faintly trickling from his lips. ''I heard that flight 801 had crashed. I had taken my wife and daughter to that flight.''

He stopped, struggling to contain the surge of emotions that washed over his face. ''I saw them off at the airport,'' he said. ''They went on vacation. I was going to go too. But I had just come back from China and was too
tired.''

President Kim Young Sam, somber and distant in a national television broadcast, expressed his sadness over the loss of life. ''The Government is trying its best to deal with the situation,'' he said.

Despite his assurances of swift action to aid the families of victims, many relatives and friends of the victims were increasingly frustrated by a sense that both the airline and the Government were flailing about in responding to the tragedy. As the
day wore on, information from the airline dribbled out, but it was often at odds with the news from reporters at the scene of the crash spilling from televisions set up at the Korean Air center.

Throughout the day, the victims' families waited for airline officials to provide passenger lists and then lists of those who had died and those who were pulled alive from the burning jetliner. Information came slowly, and was often incorrect.

By evening, frustration exploded into anger.

One man wrenched a microphone from an airline official in the waiting hall. ''Let's go directly to the President,'' he shouted. ''Why are you taking so long to advise us on the status of the survivors. We're going
outside and will ignore you until someone from the Foreign Ministry comes.''

Then the man led dozens of people out to the eight-lane boulevard and sat down on the asphalt. Traffic piled up, but no horns blared. Policemen arrived, but made no efforts to move the people off the highway.

Lee Tae Won, a vice president of Korean Air, appeared on television to announce that a team of doctors was being sent to Guam this evening and that a plane chartered from the United States military would bring the survivors back to Seoul on Thursday.

He also announced that each victim's family would be recompensed between $130,000 and $140,000.